Science to the rescue

Even though there is no reason to expect the Prime Minister to extend free speech to the folks in government lab coats when he has yet to do so for journalists, MPs, or members of his own caucus, the scientific community are beginning to stand up for the role of objective research in public-policy making.

Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His eight books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies.

Before writing his dystopian masterpiece “1984”, George Orwell expressed this fear about official lying by political parties back in 1942: “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.”

Stephen Colbert fans would recognize a certain “truthiness” to Orwell’s observation. In fact, it’s a pretty good description of political discourse in Canada. We are knee-deep in wedge politics, poisonous polemics, indentured journalism and partisan attacks that aim to destroy rather than defeat rivals.

As for the role of dissent in Canada, we’re not quite at the “two-and-two is five” stage but we’re getting there. We’ve already reached the borders of a “with us or with the child-pornographers” kind of world, as George W. Toews recently confirmed. A lot of institutional players have fallen in line with such democracy-crushing Big Brotherisms, but one group is stubbornly standing its ground – Canadian scientists.

Even though there is no reason to expect Prime Minister Harper to extend free speech to the folks in government lab coats when he has yet to do that for journalists, MPs, or even members of his own caucus, a few brave souls in the scientific community are stepping up to the plate in the name of objective truth and its critical role in public-policy making.

Dr. Jeff Hutchings of Dalhousie University is one of them. In 2009, the Royal Society of Canada commissioned an expert panel headed up by Professor Hutchings to look into the state of our ocean management. This month in Vancouver, the panel gave the federal government a resounding F for its efforts. Twenty years after the collapse of the Northern Cod off Newfoundland, a calamity brought about by government sanctioned over-fishing enabled by DFO “political” science, the experts concluded not much has changed. In the wake of Canada’s greatest eco-catastrophe, the government still doesn’t have a target for the recovery of the cod.

Hutchings, a former DFO scientist, took the blowtorch to this stunning inaction. Ottawa continues to base its oceans legislation on an ancient statute written in the 19th century. Liberal and Conservative governments have failed to implement the 1996 Oceans Act, the ostensible makeover for the hoary 1868 Fisheries Act. The result is that the same system that destroyed a fishery that had been prosecuted by 60 nations for 400 years, and in which 100,000 Atlantic Canadians were once involved, is still in place. Here is how Hutchings described the system that federal fisheries ministers continue to use to reach the most important decisions they will ever make – setting fish quotas for the industry at sustainable levels.

“It leaves huge discretionary powers to the minister of Fisheries and Oceans, who is given no science-based guidelines, targets or principles,” Hutchings said.

The Hutchings’ panel noted the “disheartening” lack of action by Ottawa on well-established scientific knowledge, an astonishing observation given that bad science, grossly inflated quotas and criminal over-fishing not only led to the commercial extinction of the Northern Cod and ushered in a moratorium that exists to this day, but the socio-economic rescue package for Atlantic Canada cost Canadian taxpayers $3 billion.

I reached Jeffrey Hutchings yesterday in Finland, 150 kilometres north of Helsinki. He told me that Canada’s investment in fisheries science has declined over time, especially in those areas not seen to be directly involved in stock assessment. He said that if Ottawa dispenses with DFO’s annual independent research surveys, it would negatively impact the scientific advice offered in support of fisheries management and marine conservation. As for The Atlantic Groundfish Strategy, which was supposed to ease Newfoundlanders out of the fishery by retraining them for news careers, reduce the number of boats in the water through a license buy-back scheme, and put the industry on a viable long term footing without further public bailouts, Hutchings told me, “I can’t imagine that anyone is particularly happy with how TAGS worked out.”

More than most people, Jeff Hutchings is entitled to his frustration that Canada’s fisheries policy remains a political crap shoot rather than a science-based exercise in sustainable ocean management. He is one of the few people who understands a tragic fact about the commercial extinction of one of world’s largest biomasses. Hutchings was one of the DFO scientists in the 1990s who realized that the Northern Cod disaster brewing in the water could have been dealt with five years before the closure if scientific reports in the hands of the federal government had been acted upon. But working from the short-term imperatives of politics and commerce, successive federal fisheries ministers refused to be the ones to call a halt to over-fishing – no matter what the science was telling them.

In the wake of the 1992 cod collapse, there was a lot of feel good talk about more science, more sustainability, and more protection for Canada’s marine resources. But as early as 1995, Hutchings concluded that DFO was again manipulating the scientific data to paint a rosier picture of the cod stock recovery than was warranted by the facts.

In 1997, Hutchings and two colleagues responded with a bold paper published by the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences in which they flatly stated that scientific inquiry was incompatible with government information control.

It wasn’t a pretty picture. DFO’s own scientists were forbidden to look at data from research surveys unless they were directly involved in the annual stock assessment. They were also forbidden to speak publicly about “sensitive matters” — e.g., the status of fish stocks under the various moratoria — irrespective of the scientific basis for their concerns. When the department spoke, it was with one voice, and the minister was always the ventriloquist.

Hutchings’s recommendation back in 1997? Ottawa should create a publicly-funded but politically independent institution that would report to the federal fisheries minister – but not as part of his department. Their assessment documents would include scientific differences of opinion on stock status and the ecological consequences of fishing at various quota levels. The aim of the scientists was crystal clear – to protect themselves from being co-opted into the political calculation of quota levels, and to force government to identify publicly the relative roles of science and non-science factors in setting the quota. “There has never been any political reaction to that idea,” Hutchings told me.

The same year that Hutchings and his colleagues were publishing their plan for reforming DFO, then fisheries minister Fred Mifflin was busy using fish for votes. In the run up to the federal election of that year, Mifflin announced 6,000 tonnes of cod quota for the Gulf of St. Lawrence and 10,000 tonnes for the south coast of Newfoundland. DFO research voyages showed that there was no increase in offshore stocks, departmental scientists were unable to estimate the biomass of the fish, and the recruitment of young fish was found to be negligible. The Liberals elected four of Newfoundland’s seven MPs, including the minister in his rural riding of Bonavista-Trinity-Conception.

Under the current government, federal government scientists are not allowed to speak to journalists without the approval of Mr. Harper’s spin-dogs. In a two-and-two is four world, shouldn’t it be the other way around?

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